Thailand Holds Peace Talks with Muslim Rebels

March 28, 2013 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

AJ Correspondents

DOHA, Mar 28 (IPS) – Thai authorities and Muslim rebels leaders have started peace talks aimed at ending almost a decade of unrest in the country’s far south, as fresh violence killed at least five people.The talks on Thursday with representatives from the Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN) insurgent group, expected to last one day, will focus on reducing bloodshed, Thai National Security Council chief Paradorn Pattanatabut said, warning the overall peace process would take time.

"Today’s main focus is to reduce violence. Today we will focus on building mutual trust and good relations," Paradorn told reporters in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur, where the meeting was being held.

Ahmad Zamzamin, a former senior aide of Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, is facilitating the talks.

Prior to the talks, a roadside bomb exploded in the Chor Ai-rong district of Narathiwat province, 840 kilometres south of Bangkok, killing three soldiers who were patrolling the area, said the 4th Army Region commander, Lieutenant General Udomchai Thammasarorat.

"The people of southern Thailand have become used to violence with attacks by suspected Muslim separatists happening on an almost daily basis," Al Jazeera’s Wayne Hay said.

Five other soldiers were also wounded in the ambush.

Authorities say the attack took place in a village that is home to a key leader of the Muslim separatist group taking part in the talks with the Thai government.

"We suspect this was the work of local militants who want to discredit the peace talks under way in Kuala Lumpur," Udomchai said.

A separate shooting incident was also reported in Narathiwat killing two Buddhist civilians.

The husband and wife were shot in Tak Bai district, where in 2004 more than 80 Muslim men died in a confrontation with security forces.

"That kind of underscores the difficulty of these talks," said Al Jazeera’s Florence Looi, reporting from Kuala Lumpur.

More than 5,300 people have been killed in the conflict in the majority-Muslim provinces in Thailand, which are under emergency law.

Rebels have carried out shootings and bombings on monks, teachers and village officials as symbols of the majority-Buddhist state.

In the past, Thailand and Malaysia have attempted, but eventually failed, to broker talks with the rebels.

"Analysts predict it will take many years before peace can be achieved in southern Thailand," Looi said. "It will be a long and arduous road. But many agree that Thursday’s dialogue is a crucial first step".

* Published under an agreement with Al Jazeera.

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2013.

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Filed Under: Asia, Conflict, Featured, Peace Tagged With: , ,

THAILAND: Malay-Muslim Insurgency – Lessons Learnt

January 18, 2012 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

By Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Jan 17 , 2012 (IPS) – Teachers’ Day on Jan. 16 was a sombre affair in Thailand’s troubled southern provinces where memories are strong of 155 educators killed over the past eight years in an insurgency led by Malay-Muslim separatists.

Yet, this grim fact – which has placed this Southeast Asian nation among the top four countries in the world for ‘teacher assassinations’ in a United Nations study – has not cowed all public school teachers from the Malay-Muslim community, the largest minority in predominantly Buddhist Thailand.

Risking death, these teachers have played a pivotal role in a path-breaking initiative: bilingual education in a clutch of public schools located in remote villages across the provinces of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat, home to the Malay-Muslims, near the Thai-Malaysian border.

This four-year lesson of hope, covering close to 300 students in primary education, has proved that Malay-Muslim students taught subjects like basic math and social studies in their Malay dialect score far better marks than Malay-Muslim students compelled to study the same lessons in the Thai medium.

"This improvement has been more dramatic than we expected," says Kirk Person, a director of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, a United States-based global network that promotes the development of ethnic minority languages and is working with Mahidol University to lead this effort. "It is pretty spectacular."

Spurred by the success, the experiment is set to be extended to 15 more public schools this year, Person told IPS. "They will also be in remote villages, where the students are Malay-Muslims and the teachers speak and teach in the local Malay dialect."

This small crack in the education system held under the grip of Thai nationalism is winning support from the Southern Border Provinces Administration Centre (SBPAC), a powerful local authority tasked with finding a solution to the conflict pitting government forces against a shadowy network of Malay-Muslim separatists.

"We want to have more public schools use the Malay language in their classes," Piya Kijthaworn, deputy secretary-general of SBPAC, said in an interview. "It may not contribute directly to peace, but it will let the local people express themselves and it is also important for their identity."

While such openness is welcome by Malay-Muslim educationists, they are far from sanguine about it precipitating change in the region’s 1,640 government schools. The latter stick to the Bangkok-driven curriculum, insisting on the Thai language as the sole medium of instruction.

"Thai governments are still not accepting the use of the local Malay language as a working language for the people in the south, even though it is their mother tongue," Abd Shakur Dina, assistant manager of the Chariyathsuksa Foundation School, revealed. "The government needs to be open to the use of Malay by the locals, because it is part of their identity."

"The place to begin is the school system," he explained to IPS. "The students will do better if they can study science, math, social studies and other subjects in their mother tongue. The low results they continue to get are because of this problem."

It is a view articulated in mid-2006 by a Thai elder statesman. The Thai government should make Yawi – the Malay dialect of the local Muslims – an "official language" in the south, declared the findings of a government-appointed national reconciliation commission headed by former prime minister Anand Panyarachun.

That recommendation was shot down by Prem Tinsulanonda, a former army chief who heads a powerful council of advisors to the Thai king. "The country is Thai and the language is Thai… We have to be proud to be Thai and have the Thai language as the sole national language," Prem said at the time.

Such opposition to the cultural and linguistic identity of the Malay-Muslim minority in public spaces is at the root of the conflict. Public schools, consequently, have become a fault line in this ethnic dispute.

Public schools are being targeted by the current crop of insurgents in the same way a previous generation did in the 1960s and 1970s. The schools are considered agents for a Thai assimilation policy that compels Malay-Muslims to take Thai names and learn the Thai language.

The conflict has roots in the annexation of the three southern provinces in 1902 by Siam, as Thailand was then known. These provinces were, until the annexation, part of the Malay-Muslim kingdom of Pattani, now in Malaysia.

The current cycle of violence, raging since January 2004, has resulted in over 5,200 deaths and injuries to over 10,000 people, including imams (Muslim preachers), teachers, bureaucrats and community leaders. While Buddhist monks, soldiers and policemen have also been targeted, the majority of the victims have been Muslims.

Heavily armed Thai troops have been fingered for a range of human rights violations, from arbitrary arrest and torture and extra-judicial killings to the deaths in military custody of 78 Malay-Muslim boys and men.

The insurgency has not been completely in vain and compelled the government to listen to Malay-Muslims demands.

"The escalation of the conflict has opened the space for the cultural issues to be considered by the Thai establishment," says Rungrawee Chalermsripinyorat, Thailand analyst for the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank. "Bilingual education in public schools would not have been possible in the past."

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Filed Under: Asia, Conflict, Featured, Geopolitics, Insurgency Tagged With:

RURAL THAILAND STRIKES BACK

July 5, 2011 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy

B.RAMAN

Rural Thailand has struck back in the general elections held on July,3,2011. And with what vehemence!

2.Since 2006, it was deprived of the  leadership of its favourite son Thaksin  Shinawatra, a Thai of Chinese origin, whose family belonged to Chiangmai in Northern Thailand. A cop turned businessman turned politician, he sought to change the face of Bangkok and Thailand after his election victory in 2001, which brought him to power as the Prime Minister. He was his own man and not the creation of Bangkok.

3. He sought to root out the bad reputation of Bangkok as the sex capital of Asia. On his orders, the unauthorised night clubs which had mushroomed all over Bangkok were demolished by the municipal authorities. They drove the prostitutes and sex girls  away from the lanes and bye-lanes of Bangkok.

4. He reduced bureaucracy and red-tapism and made the Government friendly to the man in the street and to the rural poor. No Thai leader had ever paid more attention to the problems of the rural poor than Thaksin. He was easily accessible to them.

5. Despite being the son of the rural soil, he realised that  Thai prosperity depended on the prosperity of Bangkok. He gave Bangkok a modern international airport and a rapid transit system of which it can be proud.

6. Having been a telecommunication tycoon who had earned his billions in the telecommunications industry, he improved communications and connectivity.

7. But also, unfortunately, he broke rules with abandon —not only in national interest , but also in the interest of his own business and that of his family and cronies. Being from the rural areas, he was seen as irreverent to the royal family and the ruling aristocracy.

8. All those in Bangkok— the privy councillors, senior officers of the Armed Forces and the civilian bureaucracy, the businessmen, the sex traders and others—- who felt spurned, scorned, ignored and deprived of their illegal sources of income by him—- joined hands together under the leadership of the Army and had him overthrown in a military coup in September 2006 when he was away to New York to attend a session of the UN General Assembly.

9. Since then, he has been in political wilderness flying from country to country seeking political asylum— living mostly in Dubai, but keeping in touch with his family, party colleagues and the leaders and people of rural Thailand and guiding them politically.

10. His rural support base remained intact. It was not affected by the harassment of his family members by those who had overthrown him. Nor was it affected by the corruption cases instituted against him by his successors. They could drive him out of Thailand, but they could not drive him out of the hearts of the rural people for whom he cared. His party survived repeated attempts to ban it by changing its name after each ban.

11.As the general elections approached on July 3, it became apparent that his supporters now operating under the name Pheu Thai meaning For Thai, could not be kept out of power. Their victory —now under the leadership of Thaksin’s dynamic businesswoman younger sister Yingluck Shinawatra, who is 44 years old— was widely anticipated by the local political analysts. Even Thaksin’s political opponents   —- the leaders of the Democrats Party headed by the outgoing Prime Minister Mr. Abhisit Vejjajiva— were reconciled to Thaksin’s supporters staging a come-back in the elections — but as the leader of a coalition with the largest number of seats in the Parliament without an absolute majority of its own.

12. Their calculations have proved wrong. The Pheu Thai has emerged with an absolute majority of its own—winning 265 of the total of 500 seats. Its spectacular victory has been grudgingly accepted by  the Bangkok elite. It had no other option. Even the Army has assured that there will be no more coups and that it will not again intervene in the politics of the country.

13. It will be churlish to deny Yingluck the credit for the spectacular victory. She and her advisers in the Party —-many of them hand-picked and remote-controlled by her brother from Dubai— fought a vigorous campaign. The organisational skills, which have brought them back to power, were theirs, but the populist ideas   — such as the promise to supply free Tablet PCs to about one million new school children and to raise the minimum wage by 40 per cent to 300 bahts ($9.70) per day — which motivated their election campaign were Thaksin’s. Yingluck, a post-graduate from the Kentucky State University of the US, and her party could not have won in the manner they did but for the love and affection still enjoyed by her brother among the rural people.

14. She will be the de jure Prime Minister of  Thailand. She has already announced that she will head  a coalition with the support of four other smaller parties, which had remained loyal to her party.

15. But will she be the de facto Prime Minister? If so, for how long? Will she be driven from the back-seat by her brother? Will he make her withdraw the corruption proceedings against him to enable him to return to power? If he did  and if he returned to the country to exercise his political influence de facto once again without any de jure role, will the Bangkok elite, the military leadership, the civilian bureaucracy  and the Privy Councillors accept it? Or will they join hands once again and have another coup staged?

16. Yingluck has promised a Government of reconciliation. She has indicated that there will be no political or legal reprisals against the supporters of the outgoing Government for the way they repeatedly and violently suppressed the supporters of Thaksin who took to  street agitation to demand his return to power.

17. She probably means to adhere to her promise to let bygones be bygones, but will Thaksin and his advisers allow her to do so? Or will they pressure her to go back on her pre-election promises?

18. Thaksin has always been a man who never says die. By nature, he cannot play second fiddle to anybody—not even to his sister when she is sitting in the chair of the Prime Minister. He will try to assert himself more and more. He will try to teach a lesson or two to the supporters of the outgoing Government. He will try to have the corruption proceedings against him reversed sooner or later. It is doubtful whether his sister will be able to resist the increasing assertion of his influence.

19. If and when that happens, his opponents will be back in the streets of Bangkok agitating. The continued support of the military leadership, the civilian bureaucracy and the privy councillors could become problematic. One could see a new spell of political instability in Thailand, which would come in the way of its playing its due role in the ASEAN and in it economic growth.

20. Foreign policy has never been a major issue in the contentious politics of Thailand. It never was  when Thaksin was the Prime Minister. There were suspicions about the Chinese origin of his family and about the perceived closeness of Thaksin to China and Singapore. Such suspicions could be revived, but they are unlikely to play any significant role in influencing the future course of internal political events.

21. Thaksin came to power in 2001 as a politician well-disposed towards India with personal business interests in India, but his attitude started changing when Mr.Shaukat Aziz, Pakistan’s Finance Minister, became the Prime Minister under then President Gen.Pervez Musharraf. The common  business background of Thaksin and Shaukat brought the two together. Thaksin became an advocate of a more important role for Pakistan in the ASEAN and the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF).

22. The outgoing Government had shed Thaksin’s enthusiasm for Pakistan. One has to watch for any signs of revival of the affinity for Pakistan. Along with China and Singapore, Myanmar, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos will continue to be the main foreign policy preoccupations of the new Government.

23. Thailand’s relations with the US will continue to be close. It had played an important role in helping the US in its rendition operations involving Al Qaeda suspects. It had  been sympathetic to continued US naval presence and interests in the ASEAN region. These close relations will continue.( 5-7-11)

( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Associate of the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com. Twitter: @SORBONNE75 )
 

Copyright © 2011 B. Raman – South Asia Analysis Group (SAAG).

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Filed Under: Analysis, Asia, Elections, Politics Tagged With: ,

Bangkok Could Prove Crucial To Avert Global Warming

April 8, 2011 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IDN

By Taro Ichikawa

IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis    
  
BANGKOK (IDN) – One would think that the triple disaster in Japan, unleashed by the 9 magnitude earthquake, and unprecedented flooding and mudslides in the south of Thailand would motivate government officials from around the world to agree on concrete and binding steps to halt global warming that would endanger all life on planet Earth.

But the reality emerging from the UN Climate Change conference in Bangkok, the capital of Thailand, is far removed from compelling logic. In fact, going by cold logic, there is no link between impending global warming and the devastation and human suffering that has resulted from the earthquake, tsunami and the nuclear crisis embodied by Fukushima. Earthquakes are after all not unusual in Japan.

And, there is no irrefutable scientific evidence either that exceptional flooding and mudslides in Thailand are fallout of a creeping global warming.

Whatever the validity of such arguments, the Fukushima atomic Frankenstein has one distinct message for humankind: don’t wait for catastrophes to happen before you believe they could happen, follow your common sense and take necessary measures to stave off disasters.

Following this common sense, Thailand’s Natural Resources and Environment Minister Suwit Khunkitti argued on April 5, 2011 that the Kyoto Protocol — agreed in the former imperial capital of Japan — legally binds industrialised nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and their support must continue.

"We need to extend the enforcement of the Kyoto Protocol until we have a new mechanism to reduce greenhouse gases," he said addressing the first formal round of climate change negotiations in 2011.

"We support extension of the Kyoto Protocol because we have no confidence in rich nations signing up for a second commitment period," he added.

The second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol sets binding greenhouse gas emission targets on rich nations from 2013 to 2018. The uncertainty of industrialised nations supporting the second commitment will affect the mechanism to reduce emissions, Suwit said.

Presently, Japan and Russia are turning a cold shoulder to extending the Kyoto Protocol, while the Group of 77 developing countries and China have expressed strong support for its extension.

"If the Kyoto Protocol expires, industrialised nations will no longer take responsibility for reducing greenhousegas emissions," a G77 source told the Bangkok ‘Nation’.

The Kyoto Protocol obliges industrial nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 30 per cent since it was agreed in 1997.

Suwit also called for rich nations to support financial resources and technology transfer to developing nations to fight global warming — but, the source said, so far there had been no progress from developed nations in helping developing countries.

Representatives from Japan have insisted strongly that their country will not support an extension of the Kyoto Protocol. However, they said Japan would continue its role in tackling climate change and make all possible contributions.

Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), urged the Bangkok meet "to push ahead to complete the work the governments had agreed to in Cancun (end of 2010), and to chart a way forward that will ensure renewed success in Durban" that will host the next global conference end of the year.

Figueres argued that "if they move forward in the continued spirit of flexibility and compromise that inspired them in Cancun, I am confident that they will be able to make significant new progress this year."

In Cancun, governments set a timetable to launch new institutions and sources of funding and technology to help developing countries deal comprehensively and sustainably with climate change. "This is exactly the concrete work that needs to be rapidly advanced," said Figueres.

In Cancun, governments also expressly agreed that the global average temperature rise should not exceed two degrees. But their work to create the long-term political certainty that would drive the higher emission cuts required to meet this temperature goal is not yet complete.

Countries have formally put forward their national plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but the sum of these efforts still falls short of the required, long-term effort, said the UNFCCC executive secretary.

The sum of national promises so far equals only 60 percent of what science says is required to have a medium chance of staying below the two degree goal, she said. Moreover, a coordinated system to manage and deploy enough resources to protect the poor and vulnerable from existing climate change is not yet adequate.

So, said Figueres, during this year, governments have two main tasks to address these shortfalls:

First, they need to resolve fundamental issues over the future of the Kyoto Protocol — the only existing agreement where almost all industrialised countries agreed internationally-binding commitments to reduce emissions over time.

The first period of these commitments under the protocol expires at the end of 2012 and governments have to face the fact that a gap in this effort looks increasingly impossible to avoid.

In 2011, they need to figure out how to address this issue and how to take it forward in a collective and inclusive way. Resolving this will create a firmer foundation for an even greater collective ambition to cut emissions,

Second, governments need to complete their agreed work to ensure the broader global climate regime which Cancun designed is functioning and effective in 2012. That means delivering agreed actions and institutions on time to ensure the deadlines set out in the Cancun Agreements are met.

Noeleen Heyzer, executive secretary of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), said climate change was no longer a distant threat. It was a reality and a sign of what lies ahead.

Disasters related to weather and climate are occurring in Asia-Pacific with increasing frequency. The human toll is immense — more than any other region. In fact, Asia has accounted for 80 per cent of the world’s deaths caused by natural disaster in the past decade.

"Action on climate change therefore cannot wait, and people are calling for action now. We need a new sense of urgency and responsibility," she said. "It is our responsibility to not only protect our people and our economy today, but also to prepare for future economies."

"We must be responsible in how we use the Earth’s resources. The gifts which we take for granted are not guaranteed," she added.

Developed nations’ pledges of emission cut and climate change finance were inadequate in saving the world from global warming, experts said on April 5. They also claimed that some of the monetary assistance promised by major industrialised countries for developing nations was actually a means to finance the former group to achieve their emission cut target. (IDN-InDepthNews/07.04.2011)

Copyright © 2011 IDN-InDepthNews | Analysis That Matters

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Filed Under: Asia, Environment, Report Tagged With: ,

HEALTH: Thai Touch in HIV Care Attracts Doctors from Asia, Africa

October 22, 2010 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

By Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Oct 22, 2010 (IPS) – Northern Thailand’s Chiang Rai province has many charms to draw foreign visitors, from hilltribe communities dressed in colourful ethnic clothes, trips to gentle hills close to the Burmese and Lao borders, excursions to once infamous opium trails and a journey along the Mekong River.

But foreign guests – from neighbouring countries like Vietnam to other nations like China, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Papua New Guinea – are also being drawn to the province by a very different attraction – its main provincial hospital.

These visitors, health workers for the most part, spend time at the Chiang Rai Prachanukroh Hospital to learn how Thai health workers have succeeded in reducing the spread of HIV among babies.

"We show them how our team effort, including doctors, nurses, pharmacists and people living with HIV, has been important to bring down the numbers," said Dr Rawiwan Hansudewechakul, chief of the hospital’s paediatric department. "How we train staff in community hospitals to reach out to people in distant areas has been part of this information exchange."

The Chiang Rai hospital’s rise as a learning centre for preventing mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) of HIV goes back to 1997, when this health facility was chosen by the Thai government for a pilot programme to reduce the number of babies being infected.

It was a natural choice, admits Rawiwan, given that Chiang Rai, close to several of Thailand’s borders with other countries, was in a belt that was severely hit by HIV in the early stages. There were "funerals seen every day and people were feeling helpless," she recalled.

By 2000, when the first foreign doctors started to arrive in Chiang Rai, the local staff had answers to questions how pregnant mothers should be cared for to reduce HIV transmission to their babies. The 55-year-old Rawiwan was among a team of researchers at the hospital who had been grappling with an equally daunting question – "understanding what is the natural transmission of HIV" – since 1991.

Such training courses are part of a broader programme that Thailand’s public health ministry has put into place on the back of its success in curbing the spread of HIV. These have included a 100 percent condom-use campaign and public education initiatives, including care for those living with the disease by offering access to cheaper antiretroviral (ARV) drugs to ensure longer life.

In February this year, the ministry hosted 20 health workers from Bangladesh, Bhutan, Indonesia, Mongolia, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lankan and Burma for a 10-day programme in Bangkok on how to manage PMTCT.

In March, health workers from Africa, including Kenya and Uganda, were among a group of 17 who spent a week in the Thai capital to gather insights about ARV therapy.

"These are all part of the South-South cooperation programme that is being promoted by the ministry of foreign affairs," said Surasak Thanisawanyangkoon, head of the international collaboration development section, at the public health ministry. "Treatment and care for mothers and children with HIV is a key area."

"Thai doctors are also sent to the developing countries with which we are cooperating," he told IPS. "They offer knowledge on how to monitor children affected by HIV and how to develop a good surveillance system."

Few Thai public health workers convey this spirit of Thai cooperation more than Dr Krisana Kraisintu. She led researchers in efforts against many odds at the Government Pharmaceutical Organisation (GPO) to locally produce a cheap, generic ARV tablet, replacing the cocktail of three drugs that people with HIV had to take previously.

Since 2002, the 58-year-old Krisana, whose struggles to produce the generic drug GPO-VIR even inspired a play, titled ‘Cocktail’, has been working in Africa to help her counterparts locally produce and distribute the cheaper generics.

Thailand’s efforts in combating the spread of HIV and caring for its citizens living with the disease are reflected in the declining numbers since the first case of the pandemic was reported in 1984. The country has recorded over 1.1 million cases of HIV since the beginning of the pandemic, and 300,000 people among these have died due to AIDS.

Over a third of those infected – close to 400,000 – are women, for whom PMTCT has been pivotal. The percentage of HIV transmission from mother-to-child cases has dropped from 14 percent in the early 1990s in some parts of the country to less than two percent.

In 1991, the number of new HIV cases recorded was 143,000. By 2003, it had 19,000 new cases in a country of nearly 66 million people.

"Thailand’s ability to share its knowledge is not only because it is a middle-income country and wants to be a new global player, but because it has also done a lot to respond to the spread of HIV," said Sompong Chareonsuk, social mobilisation and partnership advisor at the Thai office of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). "Many African and Asian countries want to benefit from the knowledge and technical support that the Thais are offering."

Rawiwan’s team of health workers in Chiang Rai is frequently singled out among these kinds of support due to their work in reducing HIV infection rates among children. "We have made the virus go down for 90 percent of children," she pointed out.

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2010.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


Filed Under: Featured, Health Tagged With: , ,

SOUTH-EAST ASIA: Malaria Control Drive Reaches Out to Migrant Workers

October 2, 2010 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

By Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Oct 2, 2010 (IPS) – As efforts to control malaria intensify in the region, the significance of a busy health clinic in Mae Sot, a Thai town close to the Burmese border, stands out even more.

It is the Mae Tao clinic that an increasing stream of Burmese migrants heads for in order to get treatment for malaria, after they cross Thailand’s porous western border.

"We treated 7,000 patients for malaria last year; 70 percent were from Burma," says the clinic’s well-known founder, Dr Cynthia Maung. "The number of patients increase by 10 percent every year," said Dr Cynthia, a member of the Karen ethnic minority, many of whom fled military-ruled Burma two decades ago to escape oppression.

The malaria patients going to the Mae Tao clinic, who are among the nearly 120,000 who come for care every year to this health outpost, are a vulnerable, mobile population, she reveals during a telephone interview from the border. "They come from far away places inside Burma. People don’t have exact locations and have no access to good health care."

The Mae Tao clinic is one in a vast network of health clinics that has sprouted up along the frontlines of Thailand’s battle to control the spread of malaria. Currently, 900 clinics dot the borders that this South-east Asian kingdom shares with Burma, also known as Myanmar, and Cambodia.

"The health ministry supports 400 of these border clinics while another 500 malaria posts are supported by the Global Fund," says Dr Wichai Satimai, director of the bureau of vector-borne disease at the Thai public health ministry. "They offer a combination of health care and also have awareness efforts to stop the spread of malaria."

The Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria was created in 2002 to combat the three deadly diseases in the developing world.

The challenges that Thailand faces in bringing malaria under control are similar to that of neighbouring Burma and Cambodia. All three countries are grappling with the spread of the deadly malaria parasite that has developed resistance to the effective anti-malaria drugs available today.

In view of this, public health officials are monitoring migrant workers and other mobile populations that move from areas that are malaria-infested to places with low prevalence, consequently helping to spread the disease.

"We are afraid of the drug-resistant malaria being spread by migrant workers," Dr Wichai told IPS. "This has happened before, when drug-resistant malaria spread from the Thai-Cambodian border inland, even to the Thai- Myanmar border."

Thailand is home to over two million migrant workers, majority of them from Burma in search of work in farms, construction sites, fishing boats and garment factories after fleeing conflict or economic hardship at home. The country is also a magnet for migrant workers from Laos and Cambodia.

Concerns are similar in Cambodia, where malaria is more prevalent in western provinces like Pailin, close to the Thai border, than in the central and eastern parts of the country. But its vulnerable migrant workers are domestic job seekers.

"Migrant workers are at high risk for malaria because they generally are poor, lack access to health services and also travel," says Dr Najibullah Habib, team leader of the Malaria Containment Project at the Cambodia office of the World Health Organisation (WHO). "Migrant workers are a vehicle to spread the resistant parasite."

In an effort to reach this vulnerable group, malaria prevention programmes have been introduced in the corn and cassava farms that are a magnet for poor Cambodians in search of jobs, Habib said during a telephone interview from Phnom Penh. "We try to engage farm owners to provide the workers with bed nets."

Efforts to control malaria over the past decade have resulted in a dramatic drop in the cases of deaths and malaria infection. Malaria deaths dropped by 60 percent between 1998 to 2007 in the region through which flows South- east Asia’s largest body of water, the Mekong River, according to a report released in early 2010.

Malaria incidence rates dropped by 25 percent during the same period, says the report ‘Malaria in the Greater Mekong Subregion 2010’, which focuses on Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam and China’s southern Yunnan province.

Burma, which has a weak public health system, had the most number of malaria cases in 2007 — 200,679 people infected, or 3.55 cases per 1,000 people. It recorded 2.91 deaths per 100,000 people, the highest in the region.

Thailand, by contrast, had 33,178 malaria cases and 0.15 deaths per 100,000 people in 2007, while Cambodia had 42,518 cases and 1.68 deaths per 100,000 people in that year, the last recorded in the report.

But this picture conceals the troubling trend that haunts health workers. "Since the 1970s, the Cambodia-Thailand border has been the global epicentre for emerging resistance to anti-malarial drugs," notes the report. "It is the area (where) parasite resistance to chloroquine first developed."

Today, doctors in the region are grappling with malaria resistance to artemisinin, the active ingredient in the anti-malarial drug artesuante. It is currently the most potent drug against plasmodium falciparum malaria, the strain responsible for most of the one million deaths from malaria in 2008.

"We have to be more aggressive against the deadly plasmodium falciparum parasite," says Dr Charles Delacollette, coordinator of the WHO’s Mekong Malaria Programme. "Winning the war against this parasite is a challenge."

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POLITICS-THAILAND: Red-shirt Protest Leaders Up for Trial

September 24, 2010 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

By Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Sep 24, 2010 (IPS) – A landmark political trial begins on Monday when leaders of an anti-government protest movement, known as the ‘red shirts’, will be hauled before the criminal court to face alleged terrorism charges.

The 19 accused include Veera Musikapong, leader of the United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD), as the red shirts called their movement, and other key figures, such Nattawut Saikua, Weng Tochirakarn and Korkaew Piukulthong.

Seventeen of the 19 have been languishing in the Bangkok Remand Prison, north of the Thai capital, for four months.

"There has never been a case like this before in Bangkok," Karom Poltaklang, a lawyer for the red shirt leaders, told IPS. "It is unclear how the court will proceed with this case."

The first hearing of this politically charged trial at the criminal court on Sep. 27 will see defence lawyers submitting a list of witnesses before the court.

It comes over a month after the 17 red shirt leaders were brought to court, barefoot and shackled in leg irons, to be slapped with terrorism charges, to which they all pleaded not guilty.

The Thai government accuses the UDD’s leaders of committing acts of terrorism during the street protests they held in two iconic parts of Bangkok from mid-March till mid-May 2010. The protests, which drew tens of thousands of red shirt followers from rural Thailand, were brought to an end following two bloody crackdowns, which left 91 people killed, a majority of them civilians, and close to 1,900 people injured.

The red shirts, who wear their signature crimson attire in their rallies, responded with rage following the final assault by armed Thai troops on May 19. In fleeing their encampment in the heart of an upscale shopping district, they left a trail of burnt buildings here in the capital and in several other provinces.

For its part, the government of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva has made few attempts to clear the air about the high death toll among protesters. It has pointed the finger at a shadowy group of armed ‘black shirts’, who were seen firing from behind red shirt lines during the April and May military crackdowns.

The Abhisit administration’s ability to gain this upper hand – including the trial of the Bangkok 19 – stems from the emergency decree that has been in place since early April. This decree, aimed at keeping a lid on the UDD, is still in force in seven areas including Bangkok, where soldiers have been a visible presence in recent weeks.

The nexus between the government and the powerful army has also undermined the Abhisit administration’s claims to upholding democratic values, critics say.

"Despite reports that hundreds of people have been detained and interrogated under the Emergency Decree in locations controlled by security forces, the CRES (Centre for the Resolution of Emergency Situations) has so far failed to provide information about the exact number of those detained and their current whereabouts to their families," said Human Rights Watch (HRW), the New York-based global rights lobby, in a statement released Thursday.

The CRES is a military-dominated body set up by the government to target the UDD – whose key demand for an early general election. It has been described by some analysts as "state within a state."

The terrorism charges, say Thai legal experts, stems from this power. "The Abhisit government called the leaders of the red shirts terrorists, and the police merely charged them accordingly," said Somchai Preecha-silpakul, former dean of the law faculty at Chiang Mai University, based in northern Thailand. "Using the law like this is very dangerous when the government uses the charge against its opponents."

"It will allow anyone to use the law and call their opponents ‘terrorists’," he warned during an IPS interview.

The political nature of the trial, which highlights the deep divisions in this South-east Asian kingdom, is inviting comparison with a legal case involving 18 student leaders that took place over three decades ago. That 1976 case also took place in an era of deep political polarisation.

"This kind of case involving the red shirt leaders is very rare historically in Thailand," said David Streckfuss, a U.S. academic specialising in Thai political culture. "There hasn’t been any case like this in recent Thai politics."

"It is reminiscent of the 1976 case involving 18 student leaders, who faced a litany of charges – communism, terrorism and lese majeste," he told IPS. "Those cases were resolved when a less oppressive government gave a general amnesty."

But for the supporters of the jailed red shirt leaders who gather every morning at Bangkok’s Remand Prison, what matters given the approaching trial is to boost the spirits of their "political heroes".

"We talk with them and say they have to keep fighting," said Nanthiya Nomkhoksoona, a 51-year-old Bangkok resident who joins a morning procession of close to 100 red shirts to meet the likes of the jailed Nattawut and Weng. "These are all political charges that have been brought against them by the government to silence the red shirts."

"They think they are innocent and will use the case to prove it," added Tida Tochirakarn, wife of the jailed Weng, as she waits for her turn to enter a room of grey grills. "It is a shame for the government to blame them as ‘terrorists’."

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This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


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THAILAND: Insurgency Turns Malay-Muslim Women into Leaders

September 23, 2010 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

By Marwaan Macan-Markar

SONGKHLA, Thailand, Sep 23, 2010 (IPS) – When her husband was arrested for links to an insurgency raging in this southern region, Pattama Heemmima joined the ranks of Malay-Muslim women forced into the unfamiliar routine of visiting police stations, military camps and courts to secure the freedom of their imprisoned kin.

At the same time, there was no local organisation she could turn to for help regarding her husband, Nawawee Daohumso, who was taken in by the Thai police in March 2008 for his alleged role in a killing a civilian.

But by the time a court acquitted Nawawee in March 2010 — enabling him and 34-year-old Pattama to rebuild a marriage that was only two months old when police made the wrongful arrest — Pattama had found an answer to her search for a local helping hand.

She and her elder sister, Anchana Semmina, had resolved to take on new roles as activists for justice. In mid-2009, the two sisters had set up the Hearty Support Group in the southern Thai province of Songkhla to help families struggling to secure the release of their jailed fathers, husbands and sons.

"I wanted to help these women who were desperate after their husbands or sons were arrested by the police, the military," says Pattama. "I had learnt so much after my husband’s arrest that I wanted to share it with the others in my community."

Currently, the ad-hoc help network that the two women run includes helping the families of 16 men from a local mosque’s management committee who were arrested in 2008 and are waiting for their day in court. Visiting lawyers or meeting the police on behalf of the 50 families they are helping now occupies a good part of her day, says Pattama.

The early achievements of the Hearty Support Group, however, are not an exception. It is but one of a growing number of local civil society groups that are steadily transforming the political landscape in the insurgency-torn provinces of Pattani, Yala, Narathiwat and Songkhla, close to the Thai-Malaysian border.

"This is a direct response to the conflict. The groups taking on justice issues are largely led by women," says Angkhana Neelapaijit, author of a study on the ‘Role and Challenges of Muslim Women in the Restive Southern Border Provinces’. "They are the ones you will see outside the prisons, military barracks or in the courts."

"The men are afraid of speaking out or confronting the authorities," reveals Angkhana, whose lawyer husband was ‘disappeared’ in March 2004 for exposing police brutality. "The women’s groups have become very strong now. There are more of them now than four years ago."

But this transformation is facing stiff resistance from some quarters of the very conservative Malay-Muslim community, where women are expected to play domestic roles and have historically been deprived of leadership roles in the social and political hierarchy. "The religious fundamentalists try to discredit these women," Angkhana tells IPS.

The first signs of women coming to the fore was in 2004, the year the current cycle of violence erupted following a raid on a military barracks by shadowy Malay-Muslim rebels in January. In October that year, 78 Muslim protesters died from suffocation after being packed like logs into military trucks and driven for hours to an army camp.

The women who lost their men – mostly from Tak Bai village in Narathiwat province – took on pioneering roles to create an ad-hoc network with support from Bangkok-based rights activists. "The men, even the imam, have stayed away from our activity because they fear the army," recalls a woman from Tak Bai who spoke on condition of anonymity. "(But) we want to keep the memory of our dead husbands and fathers alive through regular activity."

In the first radio programme broadcast early this year, the Pattani-based Friends of the Victimised Family Group featured interviews with women in the villages talking about impact the violence has had on them.

Others like the Yala-based We Peace conducts public seminars, where women who have relatives in jail are invited to express their concerns, at times even directly to military officers present.

A military officer who has been in such seminars concedes that women in civil society groups show "courage and are determined" in their encounters with officials. "They have become a noticeable presence since 2005. They make more noise than the men," the combat officer, on his second tour of duty in the south, says in an interview.

The fate of some 450 Malay-Muslim men in southern jails on charges of terrorism remains the primary concern of the women activists. Others, like the women from Tak Bai, have taken their own steps in response to the killings in this conflict. Over 4,300 people have died and 11,000 people have been injured over the past six-and-a-half years.

The current explosion of violence is the latest in a dispute rooted in history, from the time Siam, as Thailand was then known, annexed the three southern provinces in 1902. Until then, they had been part of the Malay Muslim kingdom of Pattani.

Malay Muslims have, since the annexation, complained of cultural, linguistic and economic marginalisation, giving rise to a separatist struggle in the 1970s.

As the insurgency showing little signs of abating, Pattama sees challenging days ahead. "People live in fear here and they need to be helped if a father or husband is arrested," she says. "It has become the women’s role to take the lead and get help."

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This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


Filed Under: Asia, Gender, Insurgency, Politics, Religion, Security Tagged With: ,

THAILAND: Red Shirts Bring Politics of Discontent Back to the Streets

September 20, 2010 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

By Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Sep 20, 2010 (IPS) – After a lapse of four months, Pukkie Mathika was finally able to break her silence, finding her way back to a busy intersection in the heart of an up-market shopping district here in Bangkok to rage against the Thai government.

She took part in the protest holding up a handmade banner in deep red, on which was scrawled a message in black text – the Thai government "kills people."

"I do not fear this government," said the 43-year-old insurance broker. "We will not give up."

She was one of the thousands who filled up the Rajaprasong intersection on Sep. 19 to reclaim it as their political stomping ground as they had done from April through mid-May. Many held up banners calling for "justice" and the "return to democracy", in addition to chanting slogans against the government of Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva.

That such a show of defiance was an illegal act hardly appeared to trouble the scores of men, women and children at the protest. After all, the draconian emergency law, still enforced in the city, states that a political gathering of more than five people could lead to arrests.

If anything, the mood of the protesters confirmed that Thailand was still deeply divided. The anti-government sentiments stood in contrast to the messages painted on nearby billboards, calling on people to "Reconcile, as we are one country, one family and one people."

As night fell, these protesters, who sported the signature red shirts of their movement, converted the streets and sidewalks into impromptu shrines. They lit red candles to remember the 91 people, the majority of them protesters, who had been killed during two violent clashes when Thai troops advanced to wrest back the streets from the red shirts.

Sunday’s outpouring, which drew close to 10,000 people at its height, was not only to mark the four-month anniversary since the red shirt protest ended with a military crackown on May 19. Sep. 19 also marked the four-year anniversary of Thailand’s last military coup.

To many red shirts, the undercurrent of anger in this South-east Asian kingdom goes back to the moment the military turfed out then prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra in September 2006. Thaksin, a widely popular and twice- elected leader, was viewed by pro-royalist, conservative elite as a threat to the entrenched order where they had, till his rise, enjoyed most of the political spoils.

Just how powerful the Thai military establishment has become four years after the coup is reflected the size of its budget since its return to calling the political shots after an interval of 14 years. The military budget has swollen from 85 billion baht (2.4 billion U.S. dollars) in 2006 to 154 billion baht (4.96 billion U.S. dollars) in 2010, reveals the ‘Bangkok Post’ in its Sunday edition.

The military’s role angers women like Wanfasuay Pattarachainant. "I have protested since the coup," said the 61-year-old. "We need to demonstrate, to show the government and the military that we disagree with their every action."

The red shirt movement emerged in the aftermath of the coup, drawing supporters of the ousted Thaksin who were angered that their electoral choice had been forced out of power. It drew wide support from the rural rice growing provinces in the north-east, a Thaksin stronghold.

In mid-March, tens of thousands of red shirts began demonstrating in two iconic areas of Bangkok to force the government to dissolve Parliament and call for an early election. But a crackdown, which saw shots fired by the military and a shadowy group of ‘black shirts’ from within red shirt ranks, brought to an end the largest public protests in nearly two decades.

But the leader of Sunday’s sudden burst of discontent sees the act of defiance as a reminder to the Abhisit administration that the red shirts will not remain quiet.

"We want to remember what happened and we want people not to be afraid of wearing their red shirts in public," says Sombat Boonngamanong, a grassroots activist. "People have been scared of wearing our political symbol, the red shirts, since the May crackdown."

"We need to stand up and show the public who we are," he explained to IPS. "There is symbolism that we need to express."

Sombat, in fact, has been spearheading similar, albeit smaller "innovative political activity" for red shirt supporters to rally around. One weekend saw him lead this protest movement on to the beaches near the resort town of Pattaya, south of Bangkok, for a party. Another Sunday had him lead red shirts through the capital on bicycles.

The 42-year-old has continued these efforts at the risk of getting arrested again. In June, he was detained by the police for two weeks for defying the emergency law after he tied red ribbons near Rajaprasong in memory of the protesters killed during the April and May crackdowns.

But the government appears to have eased its grip on Sombat and his red shirt protests for now. "The gathering on Sunday in Rajaprasong is a sign of increasing normalcy, although the situation is not totally normal," Panitan Wattanayagorn, a government spokesman, told IPS. "The demonstrators were within their constitutional rights to protest."

"The Prime Minister has acknowledged that there is a strong show of political differences from certain groups in society," he added. "They could show it and do so as long as it is peaceful."

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This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


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SOUTH-EAST ASIA: Thailand Faces Flak for Backing Mekong Dams

July 29, 2010 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

By Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Jul 29, 2010 (IPS) – Northern Thai villagers living on Mekong River’s banks are poised to join a growing tide of opposition against a planned cascade of 11 dams to be built on the mainstream of South-east Asia’s largest body of water.

These communities, many of them from the northern Thai province of Chiang Rai, are drafting a petition to be submitted in the coming weeks to Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva. They see this step as the first in a long battle to protect a riverine culture and livelihood that has come down generations.

The target of the Thai villagers’ ire is the Sayaboury dam, to be built across a part of the Mekong that flows through neighbouring Laos. In opposing it, they are coming up against powerful Thai interests behind this dam project.

The 1,260-megawatt Sayaboury dam is the one in the most advanced planning stage among the 11 dams, followed by the 360-mw Don Sahong dam, which is also in Laos, where nine of the lower Mekong dams are to be built. Two other dams on the river’s mainstream are planned in Cambodia.

The backers of the Sayaboury dam include a Thai-based dam developer, four Thai commercial banks that are reported to have pledged funds for the dam and the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (EGAT), a state utility that signed an agreement in Laos in June to buy power once the new dam’s turbines come to life.

"The local communities are upset at the direct involvement of Thailand in a dam that could permanently damage their livelihood," said Pianporn Deetes, coordinator of Save the Mekong Coalition, a Bangkok-based network of environmentalist and grassroots activists. "Their fishing livelihood will be affected, because the dams across the Mekong’s mainstream will damage fish migration patterns for spawning."

The petition will challenge the Abhisit government to reveal its position on this dam and to explain if it consulted locals, Pianporn told IPS. "Local communities have no faith in fish ladders being built at the dam site to help fish migration. They know how such technology failed with the Pak Mun dam in Thailand."

For now, history is on the side of the villagers, since the mainstream of the lower Mekong, which is shared by Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, has been free of massive hydropower barriers. The only dams that cut across the river – and have enraged the 60 million people in the lower Mekong – are three large ones in its upper reaches that flow through China.

Thus, the Sayaboury dam has emerged as a benchmark to gauge which of the competing interests will prevail in the still unresolved debate about the 11 mainstream dams and their impact on local communities and the environment.

Beyond these, activists say the dam will condemn to extinction a much-storied icon of the river – the Mekong giant catfish.

"The Mekong giant catfish is a critically endangered species that will not survive if it cannot migrate through the Sayaboury dam," said the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in describing a "critical spawning area" close to the dam site near Chiang Rai and the Lao province of Bokeo.

"This area is one of the last places in the world where the critically endangered Mekong giant catfish is found spawning in the wild," the WWF added in a report it released this week, ‘River of Giants: Giant Fish of the Mekong’.

The last time a Mekong giant catfish was sighted was in May 2009, near a section of the river that flows through the northern Thai district of Chiang Khong, says Trang Dang, WWF’s Mekong River ecoregion coordinator, in describing a fish that tips the scale at 350 kilogrammes.

These fish, whose numbers have dwindled by up to 95 percent over the past century, journey upriver from the Tonle Sap lake in Cambodia to spawning areas near Chiang Rai once the monsoons begin in May, covering distances of nearly 1,000 km at times.

The giant catfish is one of four large freshwater fish that inhabit the Mekong, the other three being the giant barb, the dog-eating catfish and the largest of them all, the giant freshwater stingray, which measures half the length of a bus and weighs 600 kg. "The world’s biggest freshwater fish and four out of the top 10 giant freshwater fish species can be found in the Mekong River," noted the WWF study. "More giants inhabit this mighty river than any other on earth."

But for now, the Thai villagers and environmentalists may be able to take heart from a comment by a Lao official. "We have studied so many planned dam construction projects, but there has been no decision to build any so far. The two dam projects in Sayaboury and southern Laos near the Cambodian border have been studied," Lao Minister of Energy and Mines Soulivong Daravong was quoted by media reports as saying in July.

But while the construction of the Sayaboury dam remains uncertain, what is clear is the growing role of the private sector in dam development, replacing institutions like the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank that used to lead such investments.

This shift presents new challenges to activists bent on protecting the Mekong River, which begins its 4,880-km journey from the Tibetan plateau, through southern China, and then Burma, before coursing into the Mekong basin, and emptying out into the South China Sea in southern Vietnam.

"When hydropower development becomes private sector led, where profit is the main motive, it leads to hydro chaos," said Carl Middleton, Mekong programme coordinator of the U.S.-based environmental watchdog International Rivers. "Each developer is trying to develop their own project to generate the cheapest electricity."

"It is not an integrated approach, balancing the needs of Laos and addressing environmental and social concerns," he added.

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